Camden FC 1 - 2 Dartford Celtic
10 December 2006 - Report by Paul O'Brien
WEYMAN SOOTHES POB'S SHAFT!
Starting Lineup: Kev W, Danny M, Ashley, Catty (capt), Dan Ahern, Paul, Kaan, Little Chris, Gambling Kev, Benneth, Mike Harvey Subs: Matty P
What’s the ramble today then? Normally there’s something not game-related that gets in the column. Actually, in this instance, I’m not sure I should’ve written a match report, as apparently our team does not exist, according to some fella when Kaan and I were going around the Camden selling the meat raffle tickets. “Where are the proceeds going?” he said. “The William Camden football team” came Kaan’s reply. “What? We are the William Camden football team, you’re not, we are the ones who have 28 people drinking in here every day”. This is the first such instance of local rivalry displayed between the 2 clubs that now represent the club since the new younger team grew from a younger kiddies side into an adult team this season. Watch this space for further unprovoked attacks by the youngsters!
This game was a re-arranged fixture as otherwise we would have not had a game for several weeks after our last game at Harchester until the New Year fixtures. Unfortunately it did mean that several of our players were unavailable. Lee Searle, Lee Burge and Ginge were all on a stag do in Bournemouth, Martin Layle was ‘injured’ (spotted by 4 people after the game walking near the Camden with a kit bag, the liar!) Dave Lee was having problems passing solids and Macca is dead, so none of them could play. This left us with a mish-mash of players out of position and a sub who hadn’t yet played outfield this season due to an injury sustained before the season started. And what a pitch to play on while on your comeback from injury! Another one similar to Danson last match, with a crater in the middle of the box that had grassed over to form an inverse mound and ‘soft-scoop’ topsoil.
Last season we had a big problem not starting games from the first whistle and going behind early as a result. This season it seems quite frequently we have started brightly but don’t make the most of our early chances to score. This game was no different as we had 2 very good chances to score, one of which I remember Kev put wide from close range. We had a lot of freedom on the right as their left flank didn’t seem to have any attacking impetus, nor were they up to much defensively in the first 45. As last week, many a through ball was put through from midfield to attack but unfortunately we were either offside or couldn’t quite make the breakthrough. Little Chris, despite playing out of his usual strikers role in Central Midfield alongside Kaan, covered every area of the pitch and showed endeavour and enterprise. Thought I would get a few unusual words in there. Plus their captain looked like Chris’s dad and had the same name, but no worries, our Jim was on the sidelines shouting and screaming at the players anyway.
We went into the interval having suffered one or 2 scares due to their pacey no. 7 latching onto the odd through ball, but otherwise were having the better of the game, and felt that the same display in the second half would see us taking the points. Never mind that we were shooting uphill this time around, last game we played better V Harchester shooting uphill
Second half again started brightly, and what I estimate to be the 48th minute Kaan won the ball and played it to myself, who played it to little Chris, then a nice through ball which the super fit Benneth ran onto, controlled and shot towards goal past the goalkeeper. Post. In. 1-0.
Unfortunately it wasn’t long before the traditional Camden collapse of the last few games. Dartford Celtic had a succession of corners, one of which found a large guy who had lost his marker and fired in a great header that he probably would’ve messed up 3 times out of 5. Credit to him as it was a well-taken header, but that meant 1-1 and now we had to play for the win again. Unfortunately this went to pot as the ball was sent through again past our defence who all claimed offside, as did the lino, the ref even acknowledged him with a thumbs up as he let play proceed, and their attacker finished with a nice effort over Kev Wright from outside the box. After pointing to the centre circle the ref then had a conversation at length with the linesman Matt Prentice while both sides argued if he was offside or not. One of them said that he was offside but the bloke who took the ball on and scored wasn’t offside so the goal should stand, but their supporters were taking the stance that he was actually well offside but the lino never put up his flag quick enough. After a few minutes arguing, the ref gave the offside to overturn his decision. Whilst I have never seen this done before, quite coincidently I was reading the 2006 annual for the old magazine ‘you are the ref’ profiled in the guardian sports section and the old ‘Roy of the Rovers’ comics, and a very similar scenario was brought up, with the answer containing the following:
“…the referee maintains his right to disallow the effort, so long as play has not re-started. However, if play has re-started and the centre has been played the goal cannot be disallowed”
‘You are the ref’, 2006
So apparently the ref (lieutenant Dan from Forest Gump) was within his right to disallow the goal. But he didn’t endear himself to the players by taking so long to do so, nor to over-rule the linesman’s flag only to adhere by it minutes later.
Unfortunately we still never learned, and from another Dartford Celtic corner we half cleared it and allowed the ball to be played back into the box, never took our chance to clear it again and their attacker scored at the near post from a tight angle.
It is the period after this which I will call my personal experience ‘the bloodening’. There wasn’t actually that much blood shed at all, but it started from a whipped in corner from little Chris which I cleverly knocked down to Ashley, who blasted it well over from just on the 6 yard box! Poor miss by Ashley. I say I knocked it down cleverly, I actually took it square in the plums and it stung like f*ck, like it had slapped the shaft. I was wailing like a newborn as the physio Mark Weyman squirted cold water all over it. No sooner had I started running that off when I took it through 2 blokes then played the ball past another, who took me out like Greeney did in the Welling game (why am I getting constantly squished all of a sudden?) and I landed on the same spot on my rib as I did against Harchester in the last match, which has injured me enough to have given this game a miss but for the lack of other players, so I was wailing again while the other team took the piss out of my haircut (a first for this season). We had already made the sub to bring Matty on so that Ben could puke his guts up off the field, so I had to play on and took an elbow in the mouth for my troubles from their left winger ‘Spencer’. There’s a good Spencer. Not sure if that was his last name or first name. But that was the only source of any blood, and that wasn’t even that much. Probably just a mouthful, no more.
Anyhoo, I cant remember the rest! And I am about to leave work so you’ll have to get the rest from others that played.
Warmlake sports – sponsored Man of the Match trophy goes to Little Chris for his encouraging energy-filled performance in centre mid despite being a striker.